In the manufacture of golfballs, it has long been the practice to form a highly elastic composite inner core by winding a rubber strand under tension about a small, resilient, spherical center. Since the spherical centers control to a large degree the shape and balance of the finished golfball core, and hence the performance characteristics of the final product, care must be exercised to ensure that the center is not deformed during the manufacturing process. This is a particularly difficult task during the initial stages of the winding operation inasmuch as the initial turns of the elastic thread tend to locally compress the resilient center.
In order to overcome the foregoing problem, it is a well known practice in golfball fabrication to freeze the resilient centers immediately prior to winding such that they are in a substantially rigid state and resist the compressive forces imparted by the elastic thread. While this technique has virtually eliminated deformation of the resilient centers during the winding operation, other problems are created with its implementation. Specifically, the process of freezing the golfball centers is cumbersome, expensive, and time consuming. Moreover, handling of the frozen centers also presents difficult problems because the centers must typically be delivered to the winding machine operators singularly and in a substantially uniform state of rigidity.
Presently, most golfball manufacturers freeze the resilient centers at a central location and manually dispense small batches in a refrigerated package to the winding stations where the individual operators remove the centers from the refrigerated package as they are needed. Typically, the centralized cooling station utilizes solid CO.sub.2 (dry ice) or liquid nitrogen as a refrigerant. Manifestly, this method of operation is highly inefficient and has several other drawbacks as well. For example, the centers dispensed in this manner may have a coating of frost formed on them due to excessive exposure to humid air in the manufacturing plant. Additionally, the centers may be exposed to widely varying temperature conditions such that centers from batch-to-batch or within a single batch may not necessarily have the same degree of rigidity. This latter problem can, in extreme instances, cause undesirable variations in the performance characteristics of the finished golfballs.
One attempt to provide a machine which overcomes the foregoing problems is disclosed in Sibley et al., U.S. Pat. No. 1,969,104. There, golfball centers are stored in a large hopper and passed through a refrigeration zone along a spiral track to a dispensing station where the centers are presented to an operator upon command in one-at-a-time fashion. However, the Sibley device has several serious deficiencies which have prevented its acceptance by golfball manufacturers. First, spiral-type tracks have been found to be inherently unreliable in the movement of resilient golfball centers. The nature of these centers is such that they do not readily roll along tortuous paths, as has been found by others attempting to solve the problem of dispensing golfball centers in one-at-a-time fashion. Secondly, the residence time of the golfball centers in the Sibley device is directly dependent upon the rate at which the centers are dispensed. Accordingly, the degree of rigidity of the centers dispensed from the freezer may vary as demand for the centers varies. The refrigeration zone of the Sibley device never reaches an equilibrium state unless the operator discontinues demand for centers for an undetermined period of time. Further, the Sibley device is not suited for applications where liquid-core centers are utilized since it has been found that a tumbling action must be imparted to such centers during freezing in order to ensure that any air bubbles in the liquid are centrally disposed.